Senin, 20 November 2017

Uber makes a big move in driverless service. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20 2017By Darrell Etherington

Uber places a big order for a driverless fleet, China's biggest tech giant is now world-ranking, and Tesla gets more truck orders for a truck that isn't yet in production. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for November 20, 2017.

Uber is ordering around 24,000 XC90 SUVs from Volvo – the car it uses for its current autonomous test vehicle. The plan is to add additional redundant systems to these cars to make them ready to roll without driver, even as backup.

These orders will cover 2019 to 2021, and could go up or down depending on how plans proceed. But the bottom line is that Uber is getting ready to move in earnest on deploying its autonomous ride hailing fleet, just as Waymo seems serious about doing the same.

Chinese tech giant Tencent is now in that rarefied club of tech companies that are valued at over $500 billion, joining Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. It's a big milestone for a tech company originating in China, but it might not be long as the only Chinese company with that distinction – Alibaba is hot on its heels.

Tesla's truck is doing well in the early offing – it's not yet in production, but already Walmart has ordered some, and now Canadian grocer Loblaw has ordered 25. These are relatively small orders, but they could lead to much bigger ones, as both retailers operate sizable fleets and have ambitions of reducing their carbon footprint.

Uber has made it possible for riders to share their live location data with drivers temporarily during pickups to make it easier for them to actually get picked up at the right spot. This actually sounds great because it sucks to have a driver go past you or stop too early and then you have to track them down.

In what's shaping up to be another showdown over privacy between the FBI and Apple, the law enforcement agency has issued a warrant to the tech giant requesting access to the iPhone SE of the Texas shooter. They issued a warrant, but apparently they didn't actually just ask Apple for technical assistance in accessing the device. Sounds like they could be angling to try to get a software backdoor tool once again.

Do you need a new sci-fi anthology series? Everyone does. That's why it's good news that Amazon Prime Video's original Philip K. Dick anthology show is coming on January 12, with all episodes available to stream then.